


got my love to keep me warm

by unicornpoe



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Alternate Universe - Professors, Bearded Steve Rogers, Christmas at Hogwarts, Fluff, Kissing, M/M, Pining, Tenderness, bucky is thristy for love and also steve's biceps, chubby bucky, i do not support jk rowling but i DO support hogwarts as in institution just fyi, if you have not guessed, it's a hogwarts au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:35:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21881617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornpoe/pseuds/unicornpoe
Summary: “Let’s go someplace warm,” Steve says. “You and me.”“Yeah,” Bucky says, quiet, and lets the crunch of snow beneath their feet fill his ears. Lets Steve pull him a little closer as they set off down the street. “Ok.”***the one where they're professors at hogwarts.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 53
Kudos: 314





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello yes i just have to get this out of my system

Bucky sits at one end of the very long Great Hall table and tries his best not to stare. 

Generally he’s pretty good at this. Halfway because he’s on the far side of thirty and _should_ be good at it by now, good lord, he’s had enough years of practice, and halfway because the object of his staring is almost never actually inside. Near Bucky. In a stare-able area. 

Like he is today. 

Steve Rogers. Hottest professor at Hogwarts. Hottest professor in the world, probably, fuck, professors shouldn’t even be _allowed_ to be that attractive, with all of those muscles and those blue eyes and nice smile, and, and, _beard_ , is he trying to murder Bucky _personally,_ because he is doing a _damn good job—_

“...Professor Barnes?” 

Bucky jumps a little in his chair. He finds that, in his dedication to the enterprise of not looking at Steve Rogers and his abs and his even gleaming teeth, he has instead gone in the opposite direction and ignored everyone. Oops. 

All eyes in the room are on him now. To be fair it’s not a ton of eyes—no more than a handful of students and professors are staying at Hogwarts over the holidays this year, thank wizard god or whatever—but still. That’s a lot of eyes to witness him being so thirsty that he almost blacks out. 

“Sorry,” says Bucky, and hopes his face isn’t red as he searches for the owner of the voice who has so rudely broken him out of his thirst-induced haze. His eyes land on Natasha Romanov, who is smirking like she knows entirely too much about him, which she probably does. Transfiguration professor. Best friend. Bane of Bucky’s existence. “What was that?”

“I was just telling Steve—” and her slim hand lands on Steve’s arm, right over the soft blue wool sleeve of his sweater, and Bucky has never been so jealous of a body part as he is right now— “about that conference we went to in Paris together last year. Wasn’t that great?” 

“Yeah,” Bucky says, throat dry, “great,” and don’t look don’t look dontlookdontlookdontlook— 

He looks. 

Shit. Oh no. Oh god. 

Steve Rogers. _Eyelashes._ Bucky gets a sudden vision of being fifteen and horny and looking across this very same table at a seventh year Steve Rogers and realizing what a really fucking swell idea it was to invent hot boys, superimposed over his reality of being thirty-something and still horny and having that same realization about that same guy except inserting the word _men_ instead. Because Steve Rogers—yeah. Whole-ass man. 

Steve Rogers, Herbology Professor, smiles softly across the table at James Barnes, Arithmancy Professor, and he uses his whole manly face to do it. Tawny-gold beard hair and eyelashes glint at Bucky accompaningly. 

The handful of students is starting to gawk. Bucky doesn’t even blame them. 

“It sounds great,” Steve says. 

“Yeah,” Bucky says again. His voice has, if possible, gotten even weaker. He’s faint with the reality of Steve Rogers, an actual and entire and beautiful specimen of a man, sitting across from him and _smiling._ “Great.”

“I am so comforted,” says Natasha quite dryly, “by the level of sparkling conversation that the faculty of this institution can uphold.”

Bucky can’t even roll his eyes at her. He takes a very, very long drink of wine instead. 

  
  


Bucky has worked at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for about six years now. 

Steve Rogers has only been here for six months. Those six months have held more pining than all of the rest of Bucky’s life put together. 

Bucky’s office sits on the fourth floor at the back of the castle, overlooking the grounds, with an almost perfect view of the Herbology classrooms that Bucky can never decide if he wants to thank or hit Headmaster Fury with a Firebolt for. On one hand, he can look out at practically any time of the day and get a good long stare at Steve Rogers: on the other hand, he can _look out at practically any time of the day and get a good long stare at Steve Rogers._

It’s not exactly a productive work environment. 

Today, however, the little garden plot that Steve can usually be found tending to between classes is bare of either vegetation or man. Instead it is covered—as the rest of this godforsaken place is—with heaps upon heaps of sparkling snow. 

No Steve to be seen. 

Bucky sighs, half frustrated, half forlorn. He gives up grading the sixth year’s atrocious essays a quarter of the way through and wanders down to the kitchens in search of something hot to drink. 

The house-elves pay him very little attention as he shuffles moodily into their midst. Many of them have worked here since Bucky was a kid: the Hufflepuff common room is right next to the kitchens, and he’s been invading this space since he was eleven. They’re used to him. 

Bucky’s used to them, too. Which is why he immediately knows that something is different. 

Bucky stops walking. Just freezes, right there in the middle of the kitchen. The house-elves ignore him. 

“Steve Rogers,” he says. 

Steve looks up at him. Steve Rogers looks at Bucky Barnes, looks away from the pot that he is stirring with a careful, practiced hand. Looks up with those blue eyes and those long eyelashes, and smiles. 

“Bucky Barnes,” he says. 

“You called me Bucky,” says Bucky automatically. Not because he really cares what Steve wants to call him—Steve could call him _anything_ and he’d probably be ok with it, because Bucky Barnes is a thirsty, thirsty, desperately-in-love man with no scruples—but because he can’t actually believe what he just heard. 

Steve’s smile gets a little wider. He has a leaf in his hair. Somehow that manages to be almost unbearably charming. Bucky wonders if he knows. 

“Yeah,” says Steve, still stirring, still smiling, turning all of Bucky’s bones into liquid with one ocean-blue gaze. “Is that still what you go by? Or do you go by James now? Sorry, I should have asked before, only I never seem to see you alone—”

“No!” Bucky says quickly, nearly tripping over himself in the urge to cross the little bit of kitchen between on lust-love-clumsy feet. “Bucky is fine, Bucky is great, it’s what all my friends call me.” All his friends. Ha. He has _one._ “I’m just, um. Surprised that you remembered me.”

 _Surprised_ is an understatement. Bucky is astounded. Thoroughly bowled over by the fact that funny, smart, kind, beautiful, Gryffindor prefect Steve Rogers apparently remembers that clumsy, shy, chubby, bookish Hufflepuff James Barnes goes by _Bucky._

Steve gets a little frown between his eyebrows. Bucky is immediately and viscerally distressed by this. “Why wouldn’t I remember you?” 

“Well,” says Bucky faintly, and then can’t seem to find the words, so he just settles for gesturing at himself with lame intent. Because he is still shy, chubby, bookish Hufflepuff Bucky Barnes. Only now he’s a professor. And somehow having a conversation with Steve, which is more than he managed in all five years that their schooling coincided. 

Steve shakes his head a little, like he doesn’t understand, but Bucky apparently looks distressed enough that Steve doesn’t push. “I remember you, Bucky,” he repeats quietly. He brings back that dazzling smile. “Would you like some hot chocolate?”

“Yes please,” says Bucky, gasping a little, and doesn’t miss the way Judy the ancient house-elf snorts at him from her perch across the kitchen. He ignores her. 

Steve just nods, and takes the pot off of the stovetop. He fetches two mugs from the cabinet with a flick of his wand and pours, finishing the whole thing off with a small mountain of whipped cream and a candy cane. All while Bucky stands and stares at him like an idiot. 

Steve Rogers is very close to him suddenly. With his arms and eyes and hair. With his lips and hands and eyelashes. And another one of those soft sweaters that Bucky just wants to sort of tip into and never resurface from… 

“Here you go,” says Steve, and fits the mug neatly between Bucky’s hands. He has to touch Bucky’s wrists to do it, and his fingers are warm and firm and a little rough. Bucky can’t catch his breath for a solid ten seconds after that happens. “I hope you like peppermint. I suppose I should have asked.”

“I,” says Bucky, and then forgets to finish the rest of his sentence because Steve _smells good._ Bucky has never stood close enough to him to realize that before. Bucky has possibly died and moved on to another plane of existence. 

It’s warm and bustling and cozy in the kitchen, and Steve’s cheeks are pink with all of it. There’s a leaf in his hair, and he smells like cinnamon and growing things, and his sweater is dark green and soft as moss, and he’s still smiling. 

And he just made Bucky hot chocolate. 

“I was wondering,” Steve starts, and maybe it isn’t just the heat of various kitchen fireplaces that’s making his cheeks rosy like that, only Bucky doesn’t know what else it could possibly be. “Do you know of a good place I could get some grading done, away from any students? I usually just do it outside, but I think it’s finally gotten too cold for that. Besides, it’s a little lonely out there. I’m new, and I don’t know any of the regular haunts, but I know you’ve worked here for a while…”

“Oh,” Bucky says, and tries not to look too eager about this, but also tries not to look like he’s _not_ eager, being a human is _complicated,_ “um, well, if you wanted you could grade in my office? I’ve. Got one all to myself. On the fourth floor. Students don’t usually come up there, it’s just me, so that might be boring, but it’s quiet and there’s a fireplace.” 

Steve beams. Bucky’s heart skips a beat. Merlin. He didn’t know that was a thing that actually _happened to people._

“Really?” Steve asks. Damn, he’s cute. Like a giant, overeager golden retriever with a beard and biceps for days. Or something. “If you’re sure it won’t bother you? Thanks, Bucky.”

 _Please marry me,_ Bucky thinks. “I can show you where it is, if you want?” Bucky says. 

Steve sips on his hot chocolate as he follows Bucky out of the kitchen. 

  
  
  


Bucky is breathless just from watching Steve grade papers about fucking shrivelfig. He is losing his mind. 

Steve has curled his entire enormous body up onto Bucky’s office couch because he refused to take the desk away from Bucky. His chivalry won him another ten points in Bucky’s opinion. Also, he’s balancing his hot chocolate on broad, corduroy-clad thigh and the stack of parchments on the other, and Bucky doesn’t know why that’s making his heart pant, but it _is._

For his part, Bucky has not gotten any work done in the last thirty minutes. He’s given up on being productive; now he’s simply concentrating on staring without getting caught. 

“I don’t understand,” Steve mumbles mildly to himself, “what is so difficult about capitalizing words at the beginning of a sentence.”

“Well if they’re Muggle-borns, they’re probably not used to writing by hand so extensively, so grammar rules tend to go out the window pretty fast,” Bucky puts in, before his brain has time to catch up with his mouth and stop him from saying anything stupid. “I know it was that way with me.”

Steve looks up at him, eyes meeting across the little room. Bucky feels his face go hot, but he doesn’t look away. 

“You’re Muggle-born?” Steve asks. 

Bucky knows he’s glowering. He’s been in love with this man since he was basically a fetus, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to stand for him being a discriminatory asshole. “Yeah,” Bucky says, voice a little sharper even than he’d intended for it to be. “That gonna be a problem for you?”

“No, no, not at all,” Steve says quickly. He looks so earnest that Bucky’s wary anger quickly fades away. Steve means it. “I just. Well, I didn’t know that about you.” Steve’s voice softens, and his expression does, too. Eyebrows sloping a little, smile wry and grateful at the same time. “And I didn’t consider that. I should probably talk to them about that, then, shouldn’t I? Ask them if they need help.”

Bucky can’t speak, for a moment. He clears his throat, and tries to look away, but finds that he just can’t. “That,” he starts, and has to take another breath, “I would’ve appreciated that, when I was young.”

Steve looks like he wants to say something else, but he doesn’t. Just smiles at Bucky, and lets his gaze wander back to his papers. 

Bucky watches him for the longest time. 

  
  
  


“Nat,” Bucky says. He’s sitting cross-legged on the end of her bed at three in the morning, drinking out of a half-empty bottle of firewhiskey and trying his best to pretend he’s a lot more sober than he actually is. “I think I’m in love with him.”

Natasha takes the bottle out of his hand and drinks. She has had more than him, but she’s Russian, and Bucky’s pretty sure it’s in her blood that she can’t get drunk. Written into her DNA or something. An intrinsic part of her genetic makeup. “You are not in love with him,” she says. 

“You don’t know that,” Bucky says. He flops backwards onto the bed, and stares at her ceiling instead of her judgemental eyes. “You don’t know me.”

“Unfortunately I do.”

“He made me hot chocolate.”

“That does not mean you’re in love with him.”

“I took him to my office and let him grade papers with me.”

“Oh.” Natasha’s face spears above his. She looks gratifyingly surprised: red eyebrows in a neat arch. Bucky doesn’t let anybody into his office, excluding her and the occasional stressed student. Bucky’s office is his quiet place, the place he goes when his anxiety rachets up to an extreme level. Sacred. Just him and his books. “That might mean you’re in love with him.”

“I mean.” Bucky closes his eyes. Natasha is giving him a headache. “I mean, I’m _not_ in love with him, right? Not possible. He’s Steve Rogers. I’ve wanted to, like, have his babies since I was a fifth year. He’s never even looked at me until fucking _yesterday—_ ”

“Oh,” says Natasha again. “I’m going to stop you right there, that’s definitely untrue.”

Bucky squints up at her. She’s spinning a little. “Which part?”

“The part about him not looking at you.” Natasha settles for stretching out on the mattress beside Bucky, which is helpful of her. Now he just has to tip his head to the side to meet her gaze. “He’s been mooning after you like you’re the love of his life for six months and you just haven’t noticed it.”

Peculiarly, all words seem to have left Bucky’s head. He thinks this information should probably excite him, but it seems so improbable that he can’t actually fathom that it’s true. Instead he just feels a little sad. _“Nat,_ ” he says. 

“It’s true,” says Natasha. “I noticed it the first day he was here. Spent the whole sorting ceremony staring at you. It was a little bit disgusting. I think he was trying to talk to you, but you scared him off by looking so good that night.”

“Thank you,” Bucky says automatically, and then, faintly, “oh my _god._ ”

“You keep doing that,” says Natasha. She pokes him in the arm and smirks a little. “Looking good, and scaring him away.”

And it’s all bullshit, it absolutely is, Bucky realizes this, but what kind of man is he if he doesn’t let his best friend hype him up a little? “You think?” he asks tentatively. 

“I _know,_ ” Nat says. “I think you should go for it. Claim that ass as your own.”

“Hmmm,” says Bucky. He closes his eyes again. Lets images of Steve Rogers dance through his head. 

  
  
  


Bucky can’t decide if fate hates him or loves a few days later when he and Steve both get put in charge of supervising a trip to Hogsmeade. 

He’s leaning toward love as he lingers by the door, assembling various students, checking permission slips, and herding the assorted clumps of children frenetic with pent-up energy. It’s a lovely day outside: bright and sparkling, enough sunlight that the snow looks like a blanket of crushed-up diamonds instead of the thing Bucky can’t walk through without a pair of boots that add ten pounds to his overall body weight. The whole castle smells like spices and pine and the melted candle wax that drips down from the sconces placed at strategic intervals along the hallway, and somewhere, from some unidentifiable local, someone is singing carols. His hair is having quite a good day today, going all soft and curly around his shoulders. His cardigan is soft, too. 

That switches to hate pretty damn fast, though, when Steve appears in front of Bucky. Bright eyes and a wide smile and messy-soft hair and a royal blue turtleneck that should look awful on him—because really, that’s way too bright a color—but instead brings out his eyes so intensely that it almost pains Bucky to look at him. He just pops up out of nowhere. Like some sort of attractive jump-scare. 

Bucky starts, and his shoulder slips off of the door frame that he’s leaning against, and he isn’t really stumbling, not really, he’s definitely going to catch his balance any time now— 

“Hi Buck—oh shit,” says Steve, and then his broad palms are both slotted around the softest part of Bucky’s waist, and Bucky cannot breathe. 

Steve is very, very warm. His grip is strong, and sure, and gentle, and the little points of pressure when his fingers and thumbs indent Bucky’s skin are as vivid as bullet wounds, as shocking as stunning spells—only entirely good. Entirely the very best thing Bucky has ever felt in his sad, secluded, Steve Rogers-less life. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve says. He sounds almost as breathless as Bucky feels, which is… a feat, actually. “Are you alright?”

There are only two layers of fabric between Steve Rogers’ hands and Bucky Barnes’ bare skin, and Bucky cannot stop thinking about that. 

“That’s ok,” Bucky says, blinking up at him. Steve still hasn’t let go. They’re probably causing quite a scene. The children they’re supposed to be escorting are likely going to stage some sort of mutiny and overthrow them if they can’t stop staring into each other’s eyes like a pair of idiots. Bucky can’t bring himself to care. “I’m… I’m ok.”

Steve’s eyes flicker over Bucky’s face fast, like he’s scanning him for lies, like he’s checking up on injuries that couldn’t possibly be there. Bucky is about three seconds or one good glance away from kissing him— 

“Good,” Steve says quietly. And then he steps away, taking his warm-strong hands with him. Gives Bucky a little smile. “Let’s go.”

Yeah. Fate definitely hates Bucky Barnes.

  
  
  


They turn the students loose upon Hogsmeade once they arrive, with strict instructions to meet them back at The Three Broomsticks in three hours. 

And then they’re alone. 

It shouldn’t be difficult. 

It shouldn’t be difficult—only Bucky spent practically his entire career as a student at Hogwarts pining after this man, and has spent the subsequent years alternatively wondering what he’s up to and trying to work up the guts just to speak with him when they became colleagues, so it really very much is. 

Bucky stands still, and pretends to watch the students run off down the street in front of them with a responsible air. Pretends not to be unbearably aware of Steve’s warm bulk at his side. Probably fails at both of those things. 

Steve is quiet, too. Bucky wonders which one of them will crack first. Maybe neither of them. Maybe they’ll just be stuck standing here in silence until it’s time to go back to the school… 

“So,” Steve says, turning to him, and Bucky experiences the unique sensation of his heart lifting and falling at the same time. Steve is just—he’s so much, here in front of Bucky. Big warm hands, broad shoulders made for holding on to. He has those hands tucked into his coat pockets, but he removes one as he speaks, lifting it a little, like—oh. Bucky thinks he’s going to touch him, just for a moment, and the way his breath gets all caught up and suspended in his chest with the anticipation of the thing that never comes is almost shameful. “Any errands to run while we’re here?”

“No,” says Bucky, and tells himself his voice is low and soft like this because they’re standing so close together and there isn’t any real need for volume. “Not particularly.”

“You sure?” Steve asks. This close, Bucky can see a few fine strands of silver running through Steve’s hair and beard, evidence of the years that have passed since they were last in school together. It makes something low and loose in his belly tighten. “I’d be happy to walk with you, anywhere you wanna go.”

“I’m sure,” Bucky says. He smiles at Steve, breath caught up in that tremulous place. “Thanks, Steve.”

Steve is making a habit of looking at Bucky a little too deeply to be considered platonic. It sends a shiver down Bucky’s spine. 

Steve watches that happen. Watches the sharp-shivery quiver of Bucky’s breath through his chest, watches the way his hands shake a little. 

Takes a step closer. 

“Cold?” Steve asks. His voice is as low as Bucky’s now. 

Bucky’s tongue feels thick and slow as honey in his mouth. “A little,” he says. 

Wordlessly, Steve offers Bucky his arm. 

Bucky stares. 

There’s a confidence about Steve Rogers that he’s always admired. The way he blusters into anything he believes in, chin held high, eyes blazing with sure-fire brashness. That’s been tempered a bit, by age and time, by the softness of this moment that’s dripping between them: there’s humility in his gaze, right now. Humility, willingness to change course if this isn’t welcome. As if to say, I think you want this, but please let me know. 

Bucky wants this. 

He hooks his arm around Steve’s, resting his gloved hand over Steve’s bicep, stepping as close to Steve Rogers as he dares. Steve smiles at him as he does it; mouth soft and pink around the edges, the little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes lovely and distracting. 

“Let’s go someplace warm,” Steve says. “You and me.” 

“Yeah,” Bucky says, quiet, and lets the crunch of snow beneath their feet fill his ears. Lets Steve pull him a little closer as they set off down the street. “Ok.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It's strange to say that I missed you, isn't it? Because you shouldn't miss someone you've never really met. But I did."

It might be easier, Bucky thinks, if Steve Rogers was just a pretty face: if Steve Rogers wasn’t a good man. But he is.

Damn him. 

The Three Broomsticks is always pretty crowded around Christmastime, and it’s no different today: crowds of people swamp the bar and the tables around the pub, pink-cheeked and laden with shopping bags. Bucky lets Steve lead the crusade inside; he’s taller, anyways. 

“Back corner ok?” Steve asks, turning to look at Bucky over one broad shoulder as they wade through tables. There’s a little bit of snow caught in his beard, dusting the contours of his chin and cheeks. It makes Bucky smile. 

“Perfect,” Bucky says, meaning it. It’ll be quieter back there. They might not have to yell in order to hear each other. “Lead the way.”

Steve shoots him one last look, brief and bright, and it carries Bucky across the busy floor. 

They settle in a small booth near the back entrance to the kitchen, piling discarded hats and scarves and gloves on the empty ends of their bench seats. Bucky bumps the table when he moves to sit down, and it rattles a little on spindly legs; he laughs, because otherwise he’s going to explode from embarrassment, and the smile that Steve sends him is fond enough for Bucky to be immensely grateful he isn’t standing any longer. 

His knees are made of jelly. Every bone in his body has melted away. 

Wanda, owner and operator, takes their order, looking frazzled but ultimately in good spirits, and Bucky’s grateful for the distraction. He is sitting here at this table. He is sitting here at this table with Steve Rogers. He is sitting here at this table with Steve Rogers, who keeps smiling at him, and found excuses for their arms to brush way too many times on the walk over here, and Bucky shouldn’t be this worked up because he dates people, he does, plenty of them, but not  _ Steve,  _ and anyway this isn’t actually even a date is it— 

Steve’s knees bump his beneath the table. Bucky  _ knows  _ that wasn’t an accident. 

He lifts his gaze from his own hands—white-knuckled with nerves around his butterbeer—to Steve’s eyes. 

It’s dim, here in their little corner, shaded a bit from the biggest fireplaces in the room, from the string of bobbing lamps that hover over the rest of the tables—but it’s not so dim that Bucky can’t make out the details of Steve’s expression. The tug of his smile. The line between his eyebrows, there even when he isn’t frowning. That spell-binding softness around his eyes. 

“I wonder,” Steve says, low enough that the words almost blend into the lull of chatter going on around them, “if we were ever here at the same time, when we were young?”

Bucky can’t look away from the angle of Steve’s wrist, the blunt steeple of his knuckles, wrapped around the bottle he drinks from. Hands. Fingers. Palms. 

“I don’t know,” Bucky says, and he must be quieter than he thinks, because Steve leans in across the table a little, propping himself up with sturdy elbows. Just so he can hear what Bucky’s saying. “I didn’t really… I never went out much.”

“You were quiet,” Steve says. Steady gaze. A tractor beam that Bucky couldn’t get out of if he wanted to. Which he doesn’t. “You always made me sorta nervous.”

Bucky can’t help but laugh at that, incredulous. Steve’s smile grows, bashful and a bit self-deprecating, and Bucky honestly cannot believe— “ _ I  _ made  _ you  _ nervous?”

“Well,  _ yeah.”  _ Steve laughs too. God, he’s got a nice laugh. Deep, and warm, and a little bit dry. Butterscotch and wool blankets. “There you were, always so composed, and smart, and smiling a bit at everybody but never  _ really  _ smiling at anyone, I… and then there was me. Huge and loud and a little bit too intense all the time. I couldn’t imagine going over to you and your smile and your books and interrupting you.”

Bucky stares at him. He feels dully pleased, deep in a place that he can’t reach, strangely shimmery with newfound knowledge. He doesn’t know what to  _ say.  _ “Steve,” he breathes, shaking his head, and Steve bumps his knees again and this time, when he goes to pull back, Bucky follows the movement with his own legs deliberately. Steve swallows. Holds still. “I didn’t think you were even looking at me.”

Steve smiles quietly. “Sure I was, Buck.”

_ Be brave, _ Bucky tells himself.  _ Be brave.  _

“I was looking back,” he says. He’s pretty sure that his voice isn’t very loud, but he can’t make it any louder. He grips his butterbeer tight, so his hands won’t shake. “I… you know, so many times after you graduated, I almost asked where you were? Almost looked you up. Just because… I mean, I know it’s silly,” he says, and he can’t look at Steve anymore, so he settles for staring down at the grain of the table beneath his hands, settles for just continuing to push air in and out of his lungs, “I know we weren’t friends, didn’t ever talk to each other, but. I always thought we would have gotten along. And. I don’t know. It’s strange to say that I missed you, isn’t it? Because you shouldn’t miss someone you’ve never really met. But I think I did.”

Steve is silent, and Bucky still can’t look at him. He shouldn’t have said that. That was… that was insanity. He sounds unstable. Clingy and romantic and ridiculous, at the very least. Lonely. Which is all true, but  _ god _ , he could have a shred of self respect, it wouldn’t  _ kill him.  _

“I think I did too,” Steve murmurs. 

Oh. 

Their corner is dim. It doesn’t matter though, because Steve could light up any room he enters. 

“I wish we’d been friends,” Bucky says. He’s already said enough humiliating things today that this one doesn’t even feel like much. He’s just being honest. He does wish that, and it’s safer than saying what he wishes they were right now. “I think that that would have been nice.”

It was the  _ wrong _ thing to say though, probably. Steve’s smile goes sad, or maybe not sad, maybe just regretful—and Bucky has never before found it as difficult not to touch someone before as he does right now. 

“Yeah, Bucky,” Steve says. “Me too.”

  
  
  


It’s nearly dark by the time they all make it back to the castle, stars just beginning to edge up over the horizon. Bucky leads the group back into Hogwarts, and Steve brings up the rear, and Bucky tries very hard not to turn around and search for Steve’s eyes through all of this hazy gloom. 

He’s being ridiculous. Again. Still. Whatever. 

The kids came back to The Three Broomsticks earlier than they were supposed to, cutting Steve and Bucky’s conversation off before it could really reach a natural conclusion, and Bucky feels a little lost because of it. A little unmoored. 

Something was happening. He’s almost certain of it. 

The thought thrills him and terrifies him at once. 

It’s dinner time, so they file into the Great Hall and take their seats. Natasha descends upon Bucky with a smile that is sharp-edged and knowing, grabbing his arm and hauling him over to sit next to her, and in the hubbub of movement, Bucky supposes it’ll be alright just to take one quick glance… 

Steve is looking at him. He smiles and blushes at the same time when Bucky meets his eyes, and Bucky trips over his own feet on his way to sitting down. 

“Hopeless,” Nat mutters under her breath as she sits much more elegantly next to Bucky. “I have to take matters into my own hands.”

Bucky sits up sharp, abruptly panicked. The last time Natasha said that, he ended up outside in the snow while she set things on fire. “For the love of god,” he hisses, “do  _ not  _ take matters into your own hands Natasha Romanov.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. She waves at Steve, pointing at the chair across from them with movements big enough that it would be impossible to ignore her. Steve lags a little, standing in front of the table; Bucky resists the urge to bury his face in his hands, and Natasha laughs out loud, and Steve is staring but he’s sitting down, too, so honestly Bucky can’t complain. 

“Steve,” says Natasha, pointing at him. She turns to Bucky, and points at him too. “Bucky.”   


“Natasha—” Bucky begins weakly. 

“I’m a little confused,” says Steve. 

“Please ignore her,” says Bucky, avoiding Natasha’s gaze and staring straight into Steve’s, instead. Out of the frying pan, into the fire, as his Muggle mother always used to say. “Please, if you respect me at all as a colleague, ignore this woman.”

Steve’s lips twitch. There’s a neat row of candles floating gently above the table, and Steve’s golden in them. He looks good in firelight. He looks good. “You have my word as a professor,” he says. 

“Thank you,” Bucky sighs, and turns his focus to his food. 

  
  


Bucky is warm and sleepy and pleasantly full by the time dinner is over. The sound of Christmas carols from earlier is back now, and there’s a fine dusting of the illusion of snow falling down from the boundless ceiling of the Great Hall, accumulating on the branches of the fur trees decorating the room. 

It’s nice. Warm, spice-scented, cozy. He feels soft and malleable, like a little puddle of candle wax, all heated by Steve’s gaze that’s been licking up and down his body for the past hour and a half. 

_ Be brave, _ Bucky had told himself earlier. 

The students have all trundled off to bed by now, so it’s just a few professors dotting the long gleaming table, a little reluctant as of yet to disband and go to bed. Bucky gets it: Natasha has been making Professor Wilson’s cutlery dance in front of his place for the past fifteen minutes and somehow both of them are still amused by it, and Steve is leaned back in his chair, that quiet smile back in place. It’s lazy. Companionable. 

Maybe a little lonely. Steve was right, though; Bucky is quiet. Always smiling, never  _ smiling.  _

Natasha glances up at him when he stands, letting Sam’s fork and knife fall back onto his plate with a clatter. Sam protests mildly, but she ignores him. She straightens in her chair. “Where’re you going, hon?” she asks Bucky quietly. 

“Oh,” he says, and smiles at her. She knows his smiles: this is an I'm _ fine, this is all just a bit bittersweet, isn’t it _ smile. “Um, bed, I think. It’s been a long day.”

Nat smiles back. He knows her smiles, too:  _ get me if you need anything.  _ “Night,” she says. 

“I’ll walk you.”

Steve is standing. He and Bucky, feet above everyone else, noticeably tall among this field of seated people. Bucky looks at him. 

“If you want,” Steve adds on, slightly quieter, squirming a bit under all the attention he’s just drawn to himself. Bucky would laugh, if he could breathe at all. 

It would be very easy to end this awkwardness by saying no, and by turning away, and by going off to his quarters on the fourth floor and pretending like this whole day hadn’t happened. But they’ve made progress, Bucky thinks. They’ve made progress, and something is  _ happening.  _

“Ok, Steve,” Bucky says. “Sure.”

Steve’s eyes widen, like maybe he didn’t really expect Bucky to say yes, but he comes around the end of the long table and joins Bucky by the door. There’s an endearing resoluteness to his movements, familiar to Bucky; this is Steve Rogers on a mission. 

This is Steve Rogers on a mission that Bucky Barnes thinks he’ll like. 

“Thanks,” says Bucky as they move out into the hallway, and the low hum of the room behind them starts to fade away into silence. Or not quite silence: Bucky can hear the thud of their feet on stone, the whisper of their sleeves when their arms brush, the pounding of his own heart. Steve’s breath, quicker than usual. That’s endearing too. 

“Oh,” Steve says, “Right, well, I was getting tired too.”

Bucky turns his head to look at him. Sure, he was a little sleepy sitting at the table earlier, lulled by good food and good wine and good company, but now—well. Sleeping is the last thing on his mind.

It looks like it’s the last thing on Steve’s, too. 

“Steve,” says Bucky, and then can’t say anything else. 

They stop moving in the middle of the hallway. They’re pretty close to Bucky’s quarters—just a couple of doors down—but Bucky can’t keep moving if Steve isn’t. There’s a line of tension strung between them, tight and golden and quivering, and Bucky would never break it. 

“Bucky,” Steve says, low, and steps a bit closer. They’re alone. Not so much as a House ghost lingers here with them. It makes Bucky’s breath quicken. Steve touches Bucky’s arm, right above the crook of his elbow, and Bucky tries not to lean into him. “I…”

“Want to come in?” Bucky asks. He’s speaking too quickly, with too much breath. He just knows that he needs to make Steve stay, and that he can’t use magic to do it. “I have coffee.”

God, he’s warm. Warm and close. 

“Yeah, Buck,” Steve says, and he doesn’t take his hand away, and Bucky doesn’t ask him to. “I’d love that.”

Bucky nods. Takes a breath. Nods again, and then—quick, before he can back out again—takes Steve’s hand into his own, winding their fingers together. 

Steve holds his hand gently. There’s something on his face that Bucky would classify as awe, if it wasn’t incredibly self-centered to think so. 

He follows Bucky inside without a word. Past the threshold of Bucky’s office, where he has so incredibly already been—and then through. Into the tiny space beyond, that functions as a kitchen and a sitting room in one, replete with a counter and a stovetop and a table with two rickety chairs. 

“Lumos,” Bucky murmurs, flicking his wand absently at the place on the wall he knows the light to be. It clicks on, turning the room gold. 

They stop moving together once they’ve drifted a bit further in the room, feet stilling on the colorful braided rug slung over the stone floor. Steve’s thumb is rubbing a tiny and entirely consuming arc over the ridge of Bucky’s knuckles, and Bucky’s heart beats in time with the strokes. One. Two. One. Two. 

“Bucky,” says Steve again. He’s softer than the faint ticking of the clock above the sink, softer than the light spilling down around them, arcing over the wide set of his shoulders like dawn breaking over the horizon. He makes Bucky gasp, just a little, all the time. “Would it be alright if I kissed you?”

“Oh,” says Bucky, voice small, and he turns in toward Steve at the same time that Steve turns toward him and they meet there in the middle, hands still latched, torsos bumping, “Steve, yes, please.”

“Ok,” Steve whispers, tipping his chin down, cupping the soft curve of Bucky’s jaw with a broad palm. “Ok.” 

It’s good. It’s nice. It’s—oh. Wonderful. 

Bucky doesn’t know how it happens—lips touching lips, the scrape of Steve’s beard against the soft skin over Bucky’s cheeks and mouth and chin, quiet breath and warmth, radiating out of the core of them, spilling out of the places they touch like a spell—but they part infinitesimally for a breath and Bucky backed up against the doorframe, stretching a little to reach Steve, and Steve’s hands are buried around the softest part of Bucky’s waist. 

“Couch,” Bucky murmurs. His fingers are sunk into the short soft hairs at the nape of Steve’s neck, and he’s holding onto Steve’s collar with the other, and lazy-glowing-full feeling is still there inside of him only it’s deeper now, truer, a little more consuming. He could sink back into it, he thinks. Sink back into Steve. 

“Yeah.” Steve traces his nose over Bucky’s round cheek, which should be weird, but instead makes the surface of Bucky’s skin buzz with a thousand shimmering stars, a trail of golden twinkles. He’s intoxicated by Steve. Positively drunk on him. “Yeah, yes, Bucky…” 

Bucky takes his hand and leads him backwards, through the doorway, around his desk, over to the low couch that Steve had spent so many hours upon days ago. They sink down onto it together; Steve, still wrapped around Bucky like Devil’s Snare, ends up on top of him, one thigh between Bucky’s, an arm beneath his head. Solid and broad as a shield. 

Bucky doesn’t mind. 

“You know,” says Steve shakily, and how is he talking right now, what the hell, Bucky can’t even  _ breathe,  _ “I’m going to want to do this lots more times.”

“Absolutely yes,” Bucky says. Hands and lips and shoulders and mouths and arms.  _ Eyelashes.  _ “Yes, yes, now please, shut up.”

Steve laughs. Steve does. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok i'm done

**Author's Note:**

> i'm really thirsty on twitter all the time @unicornpoe so. that's fun.


End file.
